Even now I remember the simple cover of Walter Brueggemann’s most famous book: dark gray with the title The Prophetic Imagination in red lettering. It was 1989, and I was an 18-year-old freshman at a small, denominational Christian liberal arts college in San Diego. In Spring of that year, I took a class on the Old Testament prophets, and one of my assignments was to read Brueggemann’s book and write an essay on it. Since I am something of a pack rat, I laid my hands on that essay and reread it the other day, shortly after Brueggemann’s passing on June 5, 2025, at 92 years of age.
What captivated me about The Prophetic Imagination, even in my young age, was Brueggemann’s definition of a prophet as one who nourishes “a consciousness and perception alternative to” that of “the dominant culture.” Prophets create that imagination first by critiquing the regnant world opposed to God’s will and second by energizing God’s people to a new way of life and being. All of that made great sense to me as someone raised in a holiness denomination, even as it made sense coming from Brueggemann, who was raised in German Pietism as the son of a pastor in the Evangelical and Reformed Church.
But something else struck me with equal force back in 1989, and it has stuck with me ever since: It is Brueggemann’s emphasis on the dangerous freedom of an unimaginably large God: “A free God is an awfully dangerous thing, and that is what the Lord is,” I wrote in my freshman essay. To put it more simply, in the words of Conrad Kanagy, Brueggemann’s recent biographer, who even wrote a children’s book about him, Brueggemann believed in a very big God.
The Prophetic Imagination, first published in 1978,went on to sell a million copies, go through two more editions, and be translated into six other languages. It is the one publication those unfamiliar with Brueggemann’s work have likely heard of, just as Brueggemann himself may be among the only biblical scholars nonspecialists would know by name. It was a watershed publication—still widely cited—affording its readers a new understanding of the prophetic task and new vocabulary to describe it.
Simply put, Brueggemann was one of the most prolific and influential Old Testament scholars of the past century, with a bibliography of over 120 separate titles. Even the most productive academic authors aspire to maybe three or four books in a career, whereas Brueggemann published fourteen in the last two years alone. Yet it is not just the quantity of published works but also their quality that amazes. Several of these books changed or redefined the field of Old Testament study.
The year before The Prophetic Imagination was published, for instance, Brueggemann authored the now-classic The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, the first study to treat the land as a serious subject in biblical theology. There can be no doubt that Brueggemann’s massive 777-page Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy will stand as one of his greatest works. There he offers the most compelling and comprehensive attempt to categorize and understand the various texts, traditions, and witnesses of the Old Testament. He treats these biblical voices as testimony—not only the core testimony of the good and trustworthy God familiar from the Law and the Prophets but also the counter-testimony concerning God’s absence and silence found in the lament psalms and Job, among other places.
Almost 20 years after publication of Theology of the Old Testament, Brueggemann published another extensive and remarkable book, Money and Possessions (2016). He once told me he had been tempted to title it Follow the Money. This volume, no less than any of the others, shows Brueggemann’s fluency in the language of Scripture as he moves easily back and forth between the Old Testament and the New. In my judgment, no other biblical scholar can match his canonical dexterity and profundity.
Brueggemann’s influence extended well beyond the world of academia, however. Like the New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, Brueggemann was one of the few stratospheric Bible scholars who could write as easily for clergy and lay people as he could for the professional guild. He once remarked to me that to be a theologian for the church, one must write on the texts that matter most to the average Christian. It is thus unsurprising that he was popular with preachers, who are likely most familiar with Brueggemann’s numerous commentaries, which include major treatments of Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Psalms, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.
In addition, Brueggemann published important monographs, such as The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education, David’s Truth: In Israel’s Imagination and Memory, Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology, and Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation. Brueggemann was always innovative and creative, applying keen insights from Scripture to contemporary issues facing Christian faith and practice.
After college, I became even more familiar with Brueggemann’s many works, first as a seminarian, then as a doctoral student in Old Testament. But my knowledge of him became firsthand when I landed my first tenure-track job at Emory University. A week after arriving in Atlanta, Professor Brueggemann welcomed me to the area by inviting me to lunch. I was, needless to say, extremely nervous for that appointment at Athens Pizza in Decatur, Georgia.
As I came to learn—since that lunch became the first of many—Brueggemann always ordered the same thing (a Greek salad) after first confirming the size with the waiter (he preferred small) and asking for some crackers to go with it. Lunch was always kept to one hour, pretty much exactly on the dot. My initial fears over dining with the legendary theologian proved ill-founded. We spent most of the time laughing during that first lunch and those that followed.
Emboldened by his kindness—if not my youthful naivety—I asked Brueggemann to guest lecture in my introductory course the next semester, and he graciously agreed. The invitation was, of course, primarily for me to have a chance to hear him up close and in the flesh, though I was happy to let my students listen in over my shoulder. I still remember his delivery; his humor; his engaging, even thunderous voice; his passion; and his exegetical genius. The lecture was on Jeremiah, and to this day, my own introductory lecture on Jeremiah depends directly on his.
Those vignettes are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Brueggemann’s kindness—and not just to me. His colleagues, especially younger ones, widely know and love him for his generous gifts. My own list is far too long to recount, but I am especially grateful for the following:
I’m grateful for the chance to hear him preach and lecture. He once wryly described the difference between a lecture and a sermon as “about 40 minutes.” No less than four volumes of his sermons have been collected (The Threat of Life and The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann: 3 Volume Set).
I’m grateful for the chance to hear him pray. I first had the chance through his reading a publication of prayers before his classes and then during my visits to his home in Michigan. Brueggemann never bothered with standard introductions like “Dear Lord” or “Merciful God.” Instead, he just dove into the heart of his prayer with direct address; he knew God was already, always there. One of his most popular collections of prayers is entitled Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth; there are now at least four other volumes of his collected prayers in print.
I’m grateful for his poetic power. This manifested itself in his artistry as a speaker, preacher, and pray-er; in his argumentation as a writer; and in his observation as the most astute of exegetes. His clear, even brutal honesty in the face of the biblical text is unmatched, save by the clear, even brutal honesty of Scripture itself. Brueggemann’s unflinching fidelity to the text won him and his works, especially his commentaries, a wide following of fans across the ideological spectrum, from mainline progressives to conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals.
Preaching After the Poet
I’m grateful for his love for the church coupled with his sober-minded awareness of its many failings. He once told me over lunch (yes, at Athens Pizza) that the origin of his deep concern with justice was his firsthand observation of how unjustly his father had been treated as a pastor.
I’m grateful for his interdisciplinary insight. Brueggemann was a voracious reader who seemed to be interested in every topic and seemed to remember everything he read. Before his lead, biblical scholars rarely ventured outside the often-narrow confines of their discipline. Brueggemann, by contrast, ranged widely—incorporating remarkable gifts from the fields of economics, sociology, politics, and psychology, to name just a few. His stunning essay “The Costly Loss of Lament,” which changed my life and many others, even entire church cultures, would have been impossible to write without the work of British pediatrician and object-relations psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott.
I’m grateful for his graciousness and good humor. I once wrote a review essay of Brueggemann’s work where I registered my many appreciations but also a few critiques. One criticism concerned what I deemed an overuse of the adverb endlessly in Brueggemann’s writing. We humans are finite creatures, after all, so our interpretative endeavors are, no matter how capacious, also limited, most certainly not endless. Only God properly deserves such a predication, I argued. Brueggemann, in his inimitable way, sent me a handwritten note after reading it, thanking me for and congratulating me on the essay, by which he said he was “endlessly instructed.” Touché! That wasn’t the first nor the last time we laughed about that and all sorts of other things.
Along with others like Carolyn Sharp, Clover Beal, Timothy Beal, Conrad Kanagy, Patrick Miller, and especially Davis Hankins, I was blessed to edit a number of works for Brueggemann. The first book I edited for him was a volume on the theology of the Book of Jeremiah, then later one on the Psalms, followed by two others on Exodus and, again, one on Jeremiah. Most recently, he made me his coauthor, asking me to help him finish a short book on Isaiah, which is now in press. I had just finished the copyedits when I spoke to him for the last time, just two days before he died.
I first edited Brueggemann when I was 25 years old as editorial assistant for the journal Theology Today. He seemed to submit a new paper to the journal every few weeks, but during my 12 months in my post, I had the chance to edit only one. The essay was, notably, on preaching as much as it was on the Old Testament. I will never forget one specific line: “It’s hard to get God said right.” That single line has stuck with me for 30 years. It is both true and memorable—and it also changed my entire view of Scripture and theology.
It is easy now to see how Brueggemann’s many books, sermons, and prayers were—and still are—ways he tried to “get God said right.” All of us who have read, listened to, and watched him have benefited from those many attempts, even when we disagreed with some of his conclusions. It is, after all, hard to get the Lord said right. That’s why we will need to keep reading, keep studying, keep preaching, keep praying … perhaps even endlessly.
It is my belief that on June 5, 2025, one of God’s most gifted, beloved, and best “sayers,” Walter Albert Brueggemann by name, joined the goodly company of the prophets. His restless, endless search to get God said right is at an end; he now knows even as he is fully known. But his witness and his words still linger with us, beckoning us to live differently, alternatively, prophetically—above all, faithfully.
Brent A. Strawn is D. Moody Smith Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and professor of law at Duke University. He is the coauthor, with Walter Brueggemann, of the forthcoming book Unwavering Holiness: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Isaiah.
